Decorating Dilemma: Jenny’s Family Room

Decorating Dilemmas is a weekly column in which our stylists answer your design questions, so you can tackle your home decorating project with complete confidence.

Hi How to Decorate!

My family and I will be moving into our new home within the next few months. Like most people, I’m constantly thinking about how I will decorate, but I struggle with figuring out what will work best when I only have the floor plan.

I love a clean, crisp, white look with a hint of coastal blues. We will be mounting our TV above the fireplace and I plan on doing a board and batten look around it. Since we will be watching TV in this room, placement of sofas, chairs, etc. are important.

There are also 3 columns – one in the middle dividing the family room and eating area/kitchen. The whole main level will be a nice dark, wide plank, hardwood flooring. Any help you can give would be so helpful!

Thank you!!

Jenny

Dear Jenny,

Thank you for your decorating dilemma. We love a clean slate and are excited to help you come up with a layout option as well as furniture recommendations for your new space.

Your brand new wood plank floors are the perfect canvas for our new La Spezia Striped Dhurrie Rug in blue. Next, position two of the Baldwin Sofas in Danish Linen Oatmeal. The frames are comfortable and allow for a generous amount of seating. In addition to the sofas, we’ve suggest adding the Larkin Swivel Glider … perfect for entertaining. Our new Suzanne Kasler Linen Sky and Blanc Stripe fabric would enhance the coastal elements, and look lovely on the Larkin gliders. For a final touch to the conversation area, try our Bornova Coffee table in Gray.

With all of the windows you have, your natural lighting is fantastic. We suggest keeping the windows open by adding mini curtain rods with panels in the Suzanne Kasler Blanc to fill the dead wall space.

Share This Story, Choose Your Platform!

We enjoy spending days interacting with How to Decorate readers. From answering Design Dilemmas to writing How To articles and working with guest designers, our passion is to provide informative and accurate resources to help people solve their design problems.

I like the arrangement very much. Right away, I could see myself on one of the sofas with my back against the armrest and my legs up on the sofa lounging while watching TV (of course this wouldn’t be possible with 8 people in the room but how many times do we want optimal tv viewing for 8 at a time). To me, this arrangement allows for lots of comfortable seating for entertaining and incorporates the television nicely but doesn’t allow it to dominate. I love the colors selected and especially how the artwork (Sous Marine Framed) and the oars will tie the room together and give it a relaxing coastal vibe. I wish this were my living room!

Hi Sally,
Our oars come with mounting hardware, so unfortunately I’m not sure what method would work best for yours. I would suggest asking someone at your local hardware store. I bet they would have some great ideas!
Best of Luck,
The How to Decorate Team